It's a lot more than seven words you can't say on the Internet, at least not if you don't want Big Brother watching you

I saw a link to this Daily Mail article on Facebook, Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don't want the government spying on you (and they include 'pork', 'cloud' and 'Mexico')."

It would all be so silly if this were something from the movies. Indeed, there were all sorts of movies about overbearing, ridiculously suspicious governments during the Cold War Era -- it's just that the government in question was always on the other side of the Iron Curtain. When we pretended not to be scared of the Soviet Union, we made fun of the Reds (Silk Stockings, for example. And, as much as we fretted about them we worried about how the long-term conflict was changing us. Sometimes we tried to laugh about it (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb); sometimes, we tried to face our fear head-on (Fail-Safe).

But this is real life, not reel life. And no one is trying for laughs. Yet, look at this list of words.

(You can find these lists here, starting at p. 20 of the 2011 Analyst's Desktop Binder, apparently published by the Department of Homeland Security, National Operations Center.)

Your tax dollars at work: With this list, all lawyers are necessarily under suspicion: "mitigation" is a suspicious word, and so is "breach." Don't write about contract disputes on line! Doctors, too, are under suspicion (as are sick people): "Influenza" is suspicious, and so too "virus" and "symptoms." With this list, how can Tom Skilling still be at large? -- look at all the suspicious words about weather.

In My Fair Lady, when Rex Harrison took Audrey Hepburn to Ascot, he tried to limit her to talking only of the weather and her health -- but things didn't work out so well. Still, at the time, Eliza won attention from only Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Today, with these keywords, she might also have attracted attention from DHS.

It's all well and good to make fun of lists like this. It's just... it's just someone in the government thought this list was a good idea. And it wasn't just one someone in government. And it wasn't just one rogue bureaucrat who thought it would be a good idea to compile dossiers on mostly legal 'Occupy' protests, as this Partnership for Civil Justice Fund website documents.

And c|net reports just this week, "U.S. gives big, secret push to Internet surveillance."

History records that Ben Franklin was leaving the closing session of the Constitutional Convention when he was stopped by a lady in the street. "Well, Doctor," said the lady, "what have we got? A Republic or a Monarchy?" Franklin responded, "A Republic, if you can keep it."

This isn't how we do that.